In many chassis based systems, multi-core technology is driving a desire for consolidation of different applications and services into single physical systems. These applications and services, once physically separated and networked together are now being integrated into a single chassis with the same security requirements that physical separation provided and the inter-connectivity that the network between them provided for inter-application operability. Examples of these consolidation requirements include WAN connectivity with Virtual Private Networking (VPN) support, network security and storage networking services, connectivity between front-end web applications with back-end database applications. In these examples, there should be both front-end network access security and application level security between application services in the front and back end. At the same time, each tier of services shares a common set of storage devices in a secure and segregated way.
In a particular example of a telecommunications architecture, namely the Advanced Telecommunications Computer Architecture (ACTA), an ATCA chassis solution has developed into a large eco-system of card types and vendors with solutions that address different product areas in the application server and gateway product market spaces. ATCA systems today have developed into large processing farms with product specific Input/Output (IO) delivery methods depending on vendor preferences and product use case requirements. In all cases, the IO delivery architectures lack sufficient standards to cover the necessary flexibility for different product type use cases that the ATCA chassis based solutions cover today. The different IO methods create complexity in the base software developed on these systems and limit the re-use of certain card vendors to meet solutions. Unique software implementations must be created to handle each of the various vendor and product specific implementations.
The current IO infrastructure in an ATCA system must cover external IO traffic from intranet and internet connections, storage traffic involved with shared storage requirements, and low latency inter-processing traffic required for clustering and control of the different processing entities. The current ATCA standards do not define suitable methods for ATCA systems to handle the different traffic types listed. The fabric is designed for inter-processing communications, but lacks methods for mixing external IO and storage requirements for the increased processing demands that are becoming necessary with the evolution of systems with regard to processing and storage, as discussed above. Some vendors use a combination of Advanced Mezzanine Cards (AMC) and Rear Transition Modules (RTM) to carry the storage and external IO traffic. This leads to unusual software methods to implement operable systems. Each card implementation requires its own sets of rules for interconnects and the card type may not meet all the requirements for storage, clustering and external IO traffic for bandwidth requirements as systems continue to evolve.